Value chain · CLM-0822
In plain terms
In a 2002 Japanese study of the 1978 US design, building the launch rockets and the vehicles that move cargo and crews between orbits accounted for only about 6 per cent of the estimated carbon dioxide from building and launching the system, and adding their propellant brings the combined share to about 17 per cent, a sum the study itself does not give.
The claim as recorded
Space transportation hardware alone, being HLLV plus PLV plus COTV plus POTV at 10,004 of 158,007 Table 3 units, is 6.3 per cent of total Baseline lifecycle CO2, and adding the separate propellants line of 17,473 units gives a combined launch-plus-propellant share of 27,477 of 158,007, or 17.4 per cent, a figure obtained by summing two Table 3 rows that the paper's own Table 2 keeps under separate headings and which the paper never states as a single number.
Scope and limits
The 17.4 per cent is the register's own arithmetic, not the paper's figure, summing two categories the source classifies separately, and it must never be presented as a quoted result. Whether this boundary matches the one used by any other assessment's launch attribution is defined by that other assessment, not by this document, so the two are NOT established as like for like. The paper's phrase "relatively low" is qualitative, and the paper does not say which Table 3 rows it covers. The launch vehicles proper, HLLV and PLV, are 424 units or about 0.3 per cent of the total, and 9,576 of the 10,004 space transportation units are the COTV, which the paper's Table 2 names the Cargo Orbital Transfer Vehicle (our arithmetic).
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
Table 3 p.4: space transportation subtotal 412+12+9576+4 = 10,004; Propellants 17,473; Total 158,007. Section 4 text, printed p.4 (PDF p.7): "Notably, the quantity released by the rockets used to launch the SPS satellites is relatively low."
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-008 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0822
CLM-0822, Energy Aperture, as of 2002.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-216
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